The Warhammer 40,000 MMO Eternal Crusade has moved onto phase two. Instead of just being some soundbites and a nice background they have actually shown off some art from the game…

First up we have a look at the main races of the game. Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar and Orks are going to make an appearance and already the artwork is looking fantastic. I like this almost exaggerated style that has a bit of the comic book about it. The Chaos Space Marine looks the best, obviously!

They then went on to take a look at a variety of Space Marine artwork. While this could just be for show it could also be looking at the classes you can be within that faction. You will able to be part of the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels or Space Wolves to begin with and then potentially diversify into Assault Marine, Terminator, Apothecary and Devastator.

It’s going to be interesting seeing how they balance everything but with the cool idea that Orks are the free faction you could see multitudes of greenskins descending on you as an honoured Space Marine.

F2P can mean more people to play with/against, a constant population in the game world keeps the game going and more players will eventually start to spend some money. I think this model has worked well for soe:s planetside2.

As long as it doesn’t turn out like the travesty that Warhammer online ended up.. Saying that, even if it doesn’t, I’m not sure I will be willing to pay the monthly fee this will most definitely bring anyway. I hate that business practise with a passion and cannot understand how anyone could put up with it. Blizzard must be using mind control techniques or something.

I hope it will be better supported than the multiplayer in Space Marine on PS3. All you get is lag, lag deaths and for the few new maps that they did release, you can’t actually choose them in the Public games, only in Private matches. They never even released new DLC for weapons either. So you’re stuck playing the same old maps in the public games with nothing new to do. And then there are the clans that have popped up during the games release, where people club together and spawn camp the shit out of you, so that you can’t even get onto the battlefield, unless you’re in a clan yourself and have mates that can help you out and develop tactics with them to beat the spawn campers. The other problem that I hope they avoid is where you can’t interrupt your own melee attacks, such as swinging a thunderhammer around, which means you’re left helpless watching your avatar spin around, completing it’s animation while you’re shot at and killed. And I hope they don’t bring the Vengeance Launcher from Space Marine into this game, and instead give you the proper and standard weapon of a missile launcher. They even managed to miss out power fists and flamers and lightning claws.

Hopefully, since it’s meant to have an RPG element to it, progression in the game will mean that you get something new to use, or at least a large variety or wargear to use and unlock. I hope they avoid all of Space Marine’s online flaws in this game, otherwise it will be dead in the water.